Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers

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Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

It'd be interesting if the traitor ended up not mattering, being solely placed to sew distrust.

What I mean is suppose all seven of them are genuinely good people (for some value of "Good"), but because they can't trust one another - because they assume someone must be the traitor - they end up destroying themselves instead of working together. All the Demon God would have to do is pick some random, reasonably strong individual and let them fight it out.

I mean, what's the worst that could happen? He fails, he waits another hundred years. Dude's probably used to it.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 08:47

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 19:04

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Can we get some confirmation from anyone who's read the light novels that this story adheres to the rules of the mystery genre? The last time I committed any effort into deciphering the central mystery of a narrative it turned out to be irrelevant since the mystery was intended to be unveiled, not solved.

A simple "Yes it does" or "No it doesn't" would suffice. In a vacuum I'd assume (and hope) "Yes," but that bit from the novel they cut out has me thinking otherwise.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 23:23

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

NowonSA posted:

I'm leaning towards Yes it does. What would you consider to be the rules of the mystery genre? I can probably give you a much better answer if I know that.

There are several competing sets of rules, not all of which are entirely applicable to this show. The big ones though I'd say should not be violated are:

The detective cannot be the culprit.
The culprit cannot commit the crime using methods the audience is unprepared for.
All clues must be presented for examination by the audience.
There must be a signal to the audience that all clues have been given.

In Rokka's case the position of detective is a bit nebulous, but as Adlet's our viewpoint character whose memories we have been allowed to experience firsthand, I'd say he's the detective stand-in. We can trust what he sees and what he knows.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2015 23:42

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

darkgray posted:

Er, the "unreliable narrator" device is present in some of my favourite mystery novels, so that seems a strange rule.

Not really.

The detective is the audience's window. If that window is dirty, how can we trust what we see through it? There are certainly a few authors capable of flaunting this rule, but the vast majority would do better to adhere to it. Also, the detective isn't necessarily the narrator.

Let's say Adlet is the culprit. We've seen what happened at the shrine through his eyes. We've listened to his thoughts and experienced his memories. We've spent more time over his shoulder than anyone else's. For him to be the culprit, he or the show would actively need to withhold information from the audience, which isn't playing fair.

NowonSA posted:

1. I think given how he appears to have been framed you can assume that Adlet is not the culprit, and will be serving as the detective in this mystery. I hesitate to just come out and say he isn't because I love hearing the crazy ideas that involve him being complicit.

Okay.

NowonSA posted:

2. Hmm... we get pretty close to this actually, but I'm sure the audience can have at least some idea on what methods the culprit used. You won't be seeing a magic teleportation Saint or anything that just completely breaks the information/clues you're using to solve the case.

Yeah, this is what I was most worried about. Rokka explicitly takes place in a world that operates on magic. What I'm looking for is assurance that this Saint of Teleportation doesn't exist, or whatever it might be.

NowonSA posted:

3. I'm quite confident you'll see every clue, but you may not know a clue when you see it.

Fair.

NowonSA posted:

4. This is trickier since Adlet's basically solving a mystery while in the middle of a war zone, and also relying on on-the-fly interrogations to try to figure stuff out. You should get a signal either through Adlet's dialogue or his thoughts that he's pretty drat sure he knows who the seventh is, but in this stressful situation even he is probably not going to be 100% sure.

Also fair. The big issue here is knowing when we've officially been given enough information to draw a satisfactory conclusion.

NowonSA posted:

What Adlet sees, does, and thinks is the truth as he sees it in that moment.

Good.

NowonSA posted:

Also, you may want to think of this as two separate mysteries:

-How did the seventh trigger the Illusion Barrier?
-Who is the seventh?

They certainly seem to be linked, but you can determine the method separately from the person who had the motive, means and opportunity to use that method.

I actually hadn't considered this. Thank you for sharing.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2015 01:05

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Speeddraw is a totally sweet last name.

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Aug 12, 2015

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 07:30

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

NowonSA posted:

I've tried to avoid spoilers, but I can't help myself here: All the braves are designed as cosplay bait.

I am having a hard time thinking of any light novel where this was not the case.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 04:51

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Detective Conan.

Alternatively, if you're not afraid of visual novels: Umineko no Naku Koro ni.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 22:13

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Tamba posted:

Umineko, I guess? The anime adaption wasn't very good though.
e: beaten

If you want to experience Umineko, read the VN or read the manga with the VN's OST playing in the background.

Do not watch the anime.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 22:30

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Flamie's "Animal" motif actually being a flower fits pretty well considering she's the odd one out, part-fiend and all.

Flowers can be beautiful, but there are several that will hurt you if you get too close.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 07:51

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Presumably the idea is that as the fiends move East, the braves march West to counter them.

Taking a boat might get them to demon god faster, but then you've got a bunch of fiends running loose, sweeping East.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 01:07

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

President Pavlov gonna build a big wall across the border to keep those fiends out.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 08:35

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Bad Seafood posted:

PROTIP: When discussing spoilers from an original work in a thread dedicated to an adaptation of that work, consider specifying that you are talking about the original work in your post and not the most recent episode or whatever. Thanks!

This has been a public service announcement.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2015 00:53

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

The ideal situation for the seventh brave is to have the braves destroy themselves in the most literal terms: braves killing other braves. Anyone who kills someone else on the pretenses of being a false brave becomes the next most likely suspect after it turns out that, no, that last guy was legit.

If at any point the plan goes wrong, the seventh brave has to hypothetically fight everyone still left alive at the same time. It's in their best interest to have as many real braves killing other real braves as possible, so that when the seventh has to get their own hands dirty the chance of them getting overpowered is marginalized.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 15:50

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Xy Hapu posted:

This is why it would make sense for Nach to have killed Adlet earlier on, it lowers the number of braves before the game even starts, lowering her risk. It doesn't really matter who kills who as long as the seventh can safely get away with it, and it seems like a surer bet to kill him herself in relative safety than to wait until the game starts and hope she can manipulate someone else to do it, all the while this is happening the chances of her being caught increase.

The death of a brave is confirmed by the fading of a petal. The minute any brave dies anywhere, regardless of circumstances, the remaining five all know about it. This poses obvious complications if your goal is to infiltrate the braves and destroy them from within, even assuming you've got a mystical tattoo of your own designed to match the others. Everyone would be on their guard from the beginning, aware that someone is killing off braves - what's more, killing off one particular brave shortly after they were selected. It's one thing if it's just, say, Flamie killing off potential braves, but a chosen brave being murdered basically immediately after being chosen? It's implied to be a fairly lengthy trip to the Demon God's land. That's a lot of time for news to travel, including the fact that the murdered brave was kept in close proximity to another "Brave." The seventh brave wants all the braves to draw together, but the real braves would be less likely to do so. Suppose some of them bring additional escorts? Just to the barrier bottleneck, I mean. Suppose several of them know each other quite well? Braves seem to be chosen semi-randomly, and many of those chosen do know one another (or are at least familiar with one another). What if you get four folks all from the save general location? Kinda leaves the odd people out suspicious. There are other possible complications.

Presuming the Nach is the seventh brave and that her goal was to trap everyone in the barrier temple, it is to her benefit that nobody suspect anything until after they're stuck together.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 17:07

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Xy Hapu posted:

Everyone already knew the fiends were striking at the braves preemptively due to the brave killer, so I don't think a preemptive strike would have surprised anyone or changed anything. If putting the braves on guard was really a consideration to the point where they would pass up killing an actual brave to keep everyone feeling safe, why would they be risking that just to kill potential braves in the first place?

Let's contextualize this.

You wake up in the middle of the night and check your hand to see you've become a brave. Cool. You go back to sleep. You wake up in the morning, pack, and head off on your quest. You glance back at your hand again and see one of petals is already gone. What.

This is a different problem than someone preemptively killing brave candidates. Brave candidates are not hard to find. Just look into whoever's the strongest warrior is in the region or, failing that, literally any saint anywhere. From an outsider's perspective it's certainly cause for concern, but it also falls along a predictable pattern. Flamie herself admitted to targeting the strongest candidates, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn her route could be traced and speculated to some extent.

Midnight comes, and the six braves are chosen. Although it's likely some of them will be saints who are easily identifiable, any of them could also just be someone deemed strong enough by the heavens. Assassins typically keep a low profile so it's likely nobody even knew who Hans was before he was selected. Possibly not even after, either.

So you check your hand and a brave's already dead. As you travel around you'd probably learn pretty quickly that it wasn't a saint, since saints are fairly public figures; the murder of one would not go unnoticed or unreported. You'd also learn it couldn't possibly be any particularly well-known warrior as word would likely get around about that too. What this means is some random (albeit strong) schmuck, of an untold number of other random schmucks, was selected to be a brave...and then promptly killed not even a full 24 hours later. Not even 12 hours later. They were selected to be a brave so it's unlikely they'd have an accident or just get chumped by some random fiend, and since they're a nobody that means it probably couldn't be Flamie's work since she only targets known entities. An unknown brave was tracked down and killed not even half a day after the braves were picked. That's a surgical strike. That is way more cause for concern than a general killing spree of candidates, none of whom would be difficult to locate.

The seventh brave doesn't want anyone to suspect anything until they're already trapped within the barrier. Killing another brave before that point would be one of the most self-defeating things they could possibly do.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 23:33

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

The eagles would've been corrupted by the ring.

Then you'd have giant, evil, invisible eagles ruling the skies.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2015 05:09

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

You've got a friend in me.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2015 06:12

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

A hilariously weak ending to an otherwise pretty entertaining show.

I probably won't bother with the sequel if it's made.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2015 00:08

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 19:04

Bad Seafood: Dec 10, 2010; If you must blink, do it now.

Srice posted:

I don't mind that but there's something about her design that makes her stick out from everyone else in a way that I didn't find pleasant.

I can't say I'm fond of her lips.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2015 04:09

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